


Hues

by Yulicia



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, Gen, Rape and Sexual Assault, Warnings for mentions of:, but they’re there, domestic abuse, none are terribly graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26486605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yulicia/pseuds/Yulicia
Summary: With her world coloured red, she wonders how long her rage will last.
Kudos: 2





	Hues

At first her world was blue; calming, promising, with a new life ahead of her. She was but a babe who had yet to know the world, and had yet to know the flow of her life. She quickly discovered her lot, and the colour then quickly dulled between beatings and harsh words into a milky grey, the kind of grey swirling in dirty water. 

(Just as she was dirty, dirty, _dirty_. Unworthy. Unloveable.) 

For a brief moment her life then became pink, sold to a man who she could only dream may one day love her. But he loved not her, but her skin, the one he loved to paint with bruises and blood. He loved her mouth, but prefered her silent and complacent. He loved her eyes, for they were empty and soulless. He loved not her, but a doll. Her life was then grey; a true grey, like clouds in stormy weather, like the skin of a fish. 

She thought she would have been happy when that man died and, for just the briefest of moments, she was. No longer would she tremble in the dark, wishing to forget the feel of his clammy fingers against her, begging for another life, any other life. With her luck, another life she got. Now the men’s fingers were not her husbands, but any man with enough coin to afford her. She was numb, cold, and deeply, deeply scared. 

Her life was white; blank, empty, soulless. Her tears were clear, but she distantly wished they were another colour. Perhaps if her tears had been blue someone may have noticed them, asked why they were shed, asked why they were coloured so. Someone may have cared. 

She had long since given up on waiting for a saviour, for there was no saviour coming. She was much too broken to be worth caring for, for one did not cry over a broken toy, did they? One simply replaced the doll when they no longer worked. But she did not want to be discarded. She wanted to be seen, for if she was seen then maybe she would be able to be loved. 

Between the endless white there were flashes of orange, just hints and sparks of embers waiting for a gust to feed the spark. She whispered in the ears of men in uniform, and found herself a use. She caught the eye of the Hunter, the tiger who feasted on fresh meat. He gave her a share of his meal, and promised her a part of an empire. 

In a sudden bloom her life was red, red, red. It was nothing but blinding hate and rage. She would see these rivers flow red with Doman blood, she would match the bruises men like these had given her with welts of her own, with dozens more, thousands more. She would repay this place in pain. There were no tears left in her eyes to cry, and she certainly would not be crying for them. Instead she would laugh, laugh as the men who had grabbed her and beat her had laughed. She would laugh because it was funny. How wonderful that she would live to see these people suffer as she had. She was free. She was a God. No one would dare touch her anymore. No-one. 

Her life was red, crimson, scarlet. It was all she saw, all she cared for. The pops of red on uniforms, the banners that hung in cold places, the taste of blood in the air. It was all red, until it suddenly wasn’t. 

She couldn’t remember what colour her life was next, but she thought it might be yellow; a sweet, sunrise yellow, the colour of life and of a new dawn, the colour of pretty flowers and walks through the countryside. There was a warmth to her life that filled her so completely that it was perhaps for the best she had forgotten her pain, for it would only turn that glow into a burn, into nails raked across already damaged skin, like a stinging salve used to treat the wound. 

The man she was with seemed to know her, but she couldn’t remember him. At first he had been red, just as she had once been, but then he saw her colour had changed and she found he instead was simply brown; the colour of kind earth and soft soil beneath her toes. She was deeply sorry for whatever it was she had done, for this man treated her with care, a care that her skin had not felt in years. He loved her like he would a daughter and though she could not know the reason, she felt as though she had a second chance. She wanted to weep with joy, but she had no idea why. 

There were more men who seemed to know her, but she could not remember why they did. These men were coloured gold, radiant and glowing. She guessed that these people must have been heroes, somehow, and distantly wondered what terrible villains they had toppled to earn such a colour. They looked at her with disdain when they knew she was looking, and with pity when they thought she was not. She wished to know why. She wished to know a lot of things. 

The man with jet black hair - the hair she herself possessed - he wanted her to know things. He wanted her, desperately, to remember, and he prattled about it constantly. She found him quite annoying, but bowed to his wishes. She wanted to remember who she was. She wanted to know what she had done. 

Tsuyu… Tsuyu… who had you been… 

And then she remembered. She remembered all of the pain and all of her tears, and that happy yellow soured and became a deep red, the colour of old blood. Revenge once more took her heart, and the fight flared back into her eyes. 

She hated her parents, and so they would die. She hated her brother and so he, eventually, would die. He had been the one who had first made her world that milky grey, and she was so happy to see that she had coloured his life green, driven him wild with jealousy. The taste of it was so sweet, like the ripest persimmon. 

This place would burn. It would all burn. 

The colour of her world then becomes two-toned: black, and then white. Dark and light. Moon and stars. Her world becomes filled with aether, with power. She fights, and she fights, and she fights, and she… losses. She’s dying. 

She realises she’s never known such peace. 

Finally, there would be no more pain. There would be no one else to hurt her. She sees her brother dead, and feels an indescribable relief. For once she does not weep nor snarl, and only smiles. Her world is once more that clear ocean blue, and in it’s open skies she finds peace.


End file.
